Instead, he’s done a lot: tough EPA constraints on coal, a meaningful accord with China to cut emissions, serious stimulus spending on clean energy, new emissions standards for cars and trucks. Obama could have easily gotten away with talking soberly about the issue but never really doing anything about it. But it’s important to consider how little political incentive Obama has had to do anything. President Obama’s actions suggest that he is truly passionate about climate change in a way that we haven’t fully grasped. His successes, however, are all pragmatic supplements to prior transformations rather than elements of a new and lasting political coalition or constitutional vision. This does not mean that Obama will be regarded as an unsuccessful president. Obama has no public philosophy, save a commitment to pragmatism - a kind of anti-public philosophy. Crucial to all of this is a public philosophy that gives meaning to the president’s political vision and Constitution understanding. So-called transformative presidents forge lasting coalitions for their political party, shape a coherent and distinctive agenda of public policy, and rebuild institutions in ways that perpetuate their coalition and their policy agenda. The energies he conjured will not reappear soon and are less likely to do so because he summoned them for so ordinary and predictable a set of policies. Put simply, it was that American politics could and must fundamentally change. Where Obama differed was his brief but unforgettable achievement of a surprisingly large consensus around a belief - or delusion - that Americans rarely entertain. He proved an impressive steward of the traditions of his party since the 1970s. His contributions were sometimes remarkable, but Obama’s primary legacy is his destruction of political idealism for the foreseeable future.
Look tim ny ag obama necbirnbaumprotocol full version#
A full version of all the historians’ answers can be found here.
Here, we have published a small fraction of the answers we found most thought-provoking, along with essays by Jonathan Chait, our national-affairs columnist, and Christopher Caldwell, whom we borrowed from The Weekly Standard. Their responses often echoed those from the far left: that a president elected on a promise to unite the country instead extended the power of his office in alarming, unprecedented ways. The contributors tilted liberal - that’s academia, no surprise - but we made an effort to create at least a little balance with conservative historians. There was more attention paid to China than isis (Obama’s foreign policy received the most divergent assessments), and considerable credit was given to the absence of a major war or terrorist attack, along with a more negative assessment of its price - the expansion of the security state, drones and all. A surprising number of respondents argued that his rescue of the economy will be judged more significant than is presently acknowledged, however lackluster the recovery has felt. Across the board, Obamacare was recognized as a historic triumph (though one historian predicted that, with its market exchanges, it may in retrospect be seen as illiberal and mark the beginning of the privatization of public health care). Kennedy’s Catholicism hardly matters to current students of history. A few suggested that we will care a great deal less about his race generations from now - just as John F. Many predict that what will last is the symbolism of a nonwhite First Family others, the antagonism Obama’s blackness provoked still others, the way his racial self-consciousness constrained him.
After the day-to-day crises and flare-ups and legislative brinkmanship are forgotten, what will we remember? What, and who, will have mattered most? What small piece of legislation (or executive inaction) will be seen by future generations as more consequential than today’s dominant news stories? What did Obama miss about America? What did we (what will we) miss about him?Īlmost every respondent wrote that the fact of his being the first black president will loom large in the historical narrative - though they disagreed in interesting ways. Over the past few weeks, New York asked more than 50 historians to respond to a broad questionnaire about how Obama and his administration will be viewed 20 years from now.
0 kommentar(er)
